UK-based Alternative music website Already Heard has released its first compilation. 'Already Heard Recommends: Volume 1' is available as a FREE download includes songs by Moose Blood, Now, Voyager, Unifier, State Lines, The First and more.

One of the Already Heard team shared this with the team earlier today and I thought it was a good, sensible read that brought up some good points.

The point about blogs/sites producing quick and short news post is something I see daily, and it frustrates me. They’re often far too brief and lack really substance, and are merely there to produce instant content that readers can easily share, which in turn increases advertisers revenue; as explained in the above link.

In the so-called “scene” I follow online and the sites I have on my Google Reader, the content produced is far too similar from one site to the next. As much as I like some of the bands being mentioned on these sites, I get bored reading about them. Bands become over-exposed. Do we really need dozens of sites writing briefly about a tweet, a band member hinted about a possible, unannounced tour that will probably happen soon?

As for “underground” blogs featuring mainstream bands, I think it’s a case of advertisers pushing for more “accessible” bands/artists to gain more revenue. I guess in some ways it is like publishers pushing for popular bands to be on magazines covers to gain more sales.

As for us folk at Already Heard, we don’t receive any advertising revenue. The ad space is there and we do occasionally mention it, but in this economic climate not everyone can put aside a couple of quid to advertise their independent release on a relatively small website.

And due to the music and genre’s we often cover; I’d say 97% of our content is anything but “mainstream,” we don’t attract the numbers to gain advertisers. However me and the Already Heard team are fine about that.

I’m sure someone will pick up on the point that Already Heard does include dozens of aforementioned brief news stories, however that’s just the nature of our “scene” and news plays a role in growing our readership and our name.

We’re not here to make money; if we were I’m sure you’d see us writing about more “mainstream” bands, we’re here to write about music and bands we love and want our readership, however small it is, to know about them. And we try our hardest by producing quality, detailed content.

Is online advertising killing music journalism? Not quite but it’s helping it evolve to an unfortunate state where sites have to “be first” and pander to readers’ need for every last bit of info as quickly and as briefly as possible.

“Fives” is a feature that we started off late last year, and in some ways sees the site continuing it’s retrospective/nostalgic approach. This is (kinda) why we’re going to be alternating “Fives and our “Versus” every Wednesday.

This week me and the four other Already Heard writers decided to pick out our favourite “emo” albums of the 90’s. I picked Sunny Day Real Estate’s ‘Diary.’

If I remember correctly, its one of many albums I discovered from reading a book called ‘Nothing Feels Good’ by Andy Greenwald. Go and read the full feature for my thoughts on the album.

Over the past few months, Mikey (AH Assistant Editor) has been working his ass off working and processing a load of new video content. This is one of the live performance videos, something that we’re planning more this year.

Housefires’ vocalist Dan Callis and drummer Nate Goodridge are playing their final show tomorrow, so we thought it’d be an ideal time to post this video and launch the “Already Heard Live” portion of our site.

This feature has been on the back of mind over the Christmas period but I think it’s came together brilliantly. Like our full album of the year list (which I never did put online,) the 50 bands that me and a selection of the Already Heard team have picked is quite diverse and varied - just what our site is. That is what so good about our team, we all have such a varied taste in music but we’re joined by one goal; to grow Already Heard through our passion for music.

In 2012 whenever I felt shitty about anything, Already Heard and the people involved in the site have kept me busy and picked me up.

Anyway go and read Already Heard’s list of 50 bands to you need to watch out for in 2013.

To put the list together, I wanted to do it fair. So I came up with a points scoring system where every writer and photographer picked up to 10 releases (including EP’s). These would then be ranked from 1 to 10 with the first choice receiving 10 points, second nine points, third eight points and so until the tenth choice was awarded 1 point.

Once every AH team member handed their results, we basically added the scores up by album.

Overall there was 146 releases on the list that proved to be an eclectic mix of bands, artists and genres

In recent years there has been a downturn music consumers purchasing physical releases, with many choosing digital downloads as an alternative. In the year 2012, this is a common, well-known fact. Year in, year out stories appear announcing the decrease in CD sales and online sales increasing.

However despite this favouritism towards digital downloads, there are some consumers who still prefer to purchase. In recent years, one physical format has continued to increase in sales and that is the vinyl format. In 2011 there was a fourteen percent increase in vinyl sales.

Nevertheless for independent labels, the production cost to produce vinyl releases can be costly, and in the current hard economic times, it can more than often be challenging for small labels to produce such releases and to please music fans.

But there are some labels who are finding away around the demanding production cost and satisfying customer needs. They are doing this by producing cassette releases, a format that, for some, has long been forgotten about since it’s decline in the early 1990’s.

In 2012 several labels are regularly producing compact cassette releases, with the likes of Doghouse Records, Lost Tape Collective, Pinky Swear Records and amongst others being part of the cassette revival

Already Heard asked a handful of labels about the cassette revival; does production cost become a major factor? Is there a nostalgic factor behind it? Has the vinyl boom influenced it?

Already Heard.com has launched a new feature called 'VERSUS. The feature see members of the Already Heard team and guest writers going against one another defending their favorite album from a certain band.
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The first of these features is now live on the site. We put the spotlight on Taking Back Sunday and it sees me explaining why ‘Tell All Your Friends’ is their best album (come on we all know it is right?)

Wolves At Heart guitarist/vocalist Keir O’Donnell counters by talking about TBS’ third album ‘Louder Now’.

Several new bands for Leeds University's Ghostfest has been announced:
Bury Tomorrow
Feed The Rhino
Heights
Brotherhood Of The Lake
Prowler
Broken Teeth
Brutality Will Prevail
All Teeth
TRC

Mystery Jets, Villagers, 65daysofstatic, Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, Dog Is Dead, Tellison, Theme Park, Boat To Row, Very Nice Harry, Yellow Fever and Fine Union, have been announced for Truck Festival. The festival will take place across 20th and 21st July at Hill Farm, Steventon. In addition BSM Records and Alcopop Records will be taking over part of the festival, with bands such as Johnny Foreigner, Tall Ships, Brontide, Talons, Gunning For Tamar and My First Tooth playing The Barn on Saturday July 21st.

The organisers of Nottingham's Hit The Deck Festival, have announced the final batch of bands:
Zebrahead
Lower Than Atlantis
Arcane Roots
Autumn In Disguise
Baby Godzilla
The Black And Reds
The Black Youth
Crazy Arm
Crossfaith
Dead Hearts
Decade
The Defiled
Don Broco
Hildamay
Mallory Knox
Polar
The Social Club
The Summer Set
With One Last Breath

The next announcement for Kent's Hevy Festival will be made on Friday 16th March.

NEWS

This Years Winner Is have posted a new song entitled 'Better Altogether'.

Skrillex has been announced for the UKF Bass Culture Arena at this year's Global Gathering, which takes place on Friday 27th & Saturday 28th July 2012 at Long Marston Airfield, nr. Stratford on Avon, Warwickshire.

The first batch for Ghostfest has been announced. The event will take place on June 30th and July 1st at Leeds University.
Emmure
Comeback Kid
All Shall Perish
Defeater
The Haarp Machine
Heart In Hand
Silent Screams
Polar
Departures
Continents

Slam Dunk North & South Line-Up Additions
The Blackout
Motion City Soundtrack
Say Anything
Hit The Lights
The Story So Far
Lower Than Atlantis
While She Sleeps
Of Mice & Men
Don Broco
The Word Alive
For The Fallen Dreams
I See Stars
Upon A Burning Body

Johnny Foreigner
3rd March, Derby, The Victoria Inn (with We Are The Physics)
7th March, Southampton, Unit
8th March, Brighton, The Green Door Store (with We Are The Physics And Joanna Gruesome)
9th March, Northampton, Labour Club (with We Are The Physics And Zola)
10th March, Cheltnam, Frog And Fiddle (with We Are The Physics)
11th March, Leeds, Brudenell Social Club (with We Are The Physics)
16th March, Birmingham, The Flapper (with A Cast Of Genius)

FESTIVAL NEWS
The first set of bands for this years Slam Dunk Festival have been announced, and will take place at Leeds Uni on Saturday May 26th and Herts Uni, Hatfield on Sunday, May 27th. Bands announced so far: Taking Back Sunday, Architects, The King Blues, Every Time I DIe, Cancer Bats, Mayday Parade, Forever The Sickest Kids, Set Your Goals, The Audition and Make Do And Mend.

As you may have seen, the new music website I’ve been working announced it’s new name earlier today.

The site is called Already Heard* and will be fully launching in the coming months. The reason we haven’t fully launched the site is for two reasons; the final design/layout is still being worked on and secondly, we wanted to have plenty of original content prepared for when the site is fully live.

From my perspective what is the point of having a site that looks great, if the content is pointless, right? So that’s what me and the rest of the Already Heard team are doing; making content and by content I just don’t mean your usual music webzine/website/blog stuff; reviews, interviews, news.

I’ll admit the latter will be part of AlreadyHeard.com but one of our main aims is to produce original content that is interesting, engaging and possibly even thought-provoking.

That’s not saying news won’t be part of the site. In this day and age of social media and the internet etc, people want news and information instantaneously, and Already Heard will be posting news but we know there’s tons and tons of sites out there covering the same stories etc. That’s why our aim is to put emphasis on original content.

If you know me, thanks for your support and I hope my words above haven’t put you off from continuing your support and interest in AlreadyHeard.com, and if you don’t know me, then thanks for reading and I hope you will support the site in the coming months.

For me, today is a big, positive step forward. One that leaves me feeling hopeful for what is to come. I hope you’re excited as me and the rest of the AH team are.

Thanks again.

If you’re in a band, run a label or are generally interested in working with AlreadyHeard.com, send me an e-mail: sean@alreadyheard.com

*Yes the name is influenced by Brand New, but I think the name has a nice sound to it.
^I forgot to mention above the fact that the site will be producing video content. We’ll using Youtube/Vimeo, so users/readers/viewers can easily share that content.